1. The Walking Dead
I'm not a doctor or nurse, but the doctor who saw my mom said he had no idea how she was alive.
Years ago, my mom was having gastrointestinal problems. She had incessant stomach aches and was bound up with something awful. After 3 days of not being able to poop, she went to the doctor to get checked out.
After a thorough examination, the doctor determined that her gallbladder needed to be removed immediately.
The next day, after the surgery, my mom comes to and sees the doctor standing over... and he wasn't happy.
"Your gall bladder was dead," he said. "Like, dead dead. In fact, it was completely gangrenous. Had you waited another day to see me, you would've died. Had it ruptured during surgery, you would've died. That was the worst, most stress-inducing surgery I ever had to perform in my 20-year career. No offense, but I hope I never see you again." And he walked out of the room.
Boon3hams
2. Perplexing Baby
When my son was a day old, the nurse came in to check on him. She couldn't get a temp so she went and got a new thermometer (digital). Same as before, no reading. She was puzzled so she brought him out of the room and put him under a heat lamp.
After a while his temp registered. They knew something was wrong. Tested his blood sugar, it was 2. It started to get very scary for everyone. Down to the NICU for the next two weeks.
Turns out he has a genetic disorder called MCAD. His body cannot process medium chain fats. Long story short, he cannot fast. Ever. His body will use the reserves of sugar but once they are depleted, he could crash and go into a diabetic coma.
This is what happened the day he was born. He wouldn't breastfeed and didn't want a bottle. So we learned of this condition the hard way. The first 1.5 years of his life was tough as he had to wake up and eat every few hours. My wife and I never had a full 8 hours of sleep for almost 5 years.
We have landed in the hospital when he is vomiting from the flu many times. If he can't keep anything down, he must go on a sugar drip.
But today, he is 11 and healthy. 5'8 and 155 lbs. A big strong solid boy. No long term disabilities from the sugar crash. The condition has never presented again but we do make sure he always has enough calories.
My only concern is when he is a teenager or young adult. Fasting during a hangover is OK for most, but not him.
hi5ves
3. Bloody Mary
I had a patient I just delivered, we pushed for 4+ hours before ending up in a C-section. We get back to the room, and I push down on her belly to check the bleeding. It was a little excessive so I called the doc.
He came in, minimal bleeding, because that’s how it goes. The blood pressure goes off, it’s in the 60s. I did another fundal and had just non stop tennis ball size clots coming out. Luckily the doc was at the nurse’s station and someone showed him the blood pressure.
He comes into the room as I’m doing the fundal and immediately calls a massive transfusion protocol.
We ended up in the OR giving her so much blood, he placed a tamponade balloon, and we went to PACU to finish the recovery. It’s just me and one other nurse.
Everything is going well for a bit, but then there’s more bleeding than normal in the drainage bag, her lips are blue, face is super white, and the blood pressure reads in the 50s. The doc sends his resident to check it out who says it’s fine and to give more blood.
I ended up calling the anesthesiologist and asking him to come assess. He was known for being rude, but he came in there and immediately called the OB and yelled at him to get in there immediately.
I had a lot of respect for him after that, and was really grateful he hadn’t blown me off. I still don’t know why he didn’t blow me off when I called him.
We end up back in OR and she ends up needing an emergency hysterectomy. The doc described her uterus as being a paper bag. I came from the ICU stepdown and was used to patients that looked like crap, but I really thought this lady was going to code and die.
It ended up she lost like 3L of blood, was intubated, and in ICU for a few days. I never went to go see her again because I was so mortified by what had happened. I was newer to labor at the time and kept feeling like I made a mistake somewhere.
Sunflowerslove
4. That Was Fast
18 years ago I went into the ER to get a cyst lanced open. 3 weeks later I felt pain in my back. I went back to the ER and they found nothing. Only x-rays. I felt weak leaving so went home and crashed on my couch.
I woke up hours later and tried to get up and fell. I went down fast. I called an ambulance and went to the hospital. I sat for 6 hours until finally someone came to check me out. I had a 105.0 fever! They immediately rushed me into an MRI and lo and behold I have MRSA inside my spine.
I was rushed into surgery and now live from a wheelchair. The doctors said if I waited one more day I wouldn't be here. I did 16 weeks of Vancomycin through IV. 3 hours twice a day! I'm truly lucky to be alive today.
Particular_Clue_4074
5. Something’s Off
My ex boyfriend is a ski instructor. He told me that one day, all the slopes were extremely icy and many people were coming in with injuries. He had fallen badly and returned to the ski lodge. He was checked out and said he felt fine.
Fortunately, a paramedic happened to be looking at him when his helmet swung open on the side because it was very badly cracked. They took a nine year old girl with a broken femur off a stretcher and put him on it and took him to the hospital immediately, where they found he had broken his neck and needed immediate surgery.
Amazingly, he is mostly fine, except for now having acid reflux for some reason.
Suspicious_Plantain4
6. Fighting Back
The CPR algorithm changed about a decade ago from ABC (airway, breathing and circulation) to CAB (circulation, airway, breathing). This means that instead of opening the airway/giving rescue breaths first, we began doing compressions first.
The first time I used the new version was at a witnessed arrest. I happened to be at the bedside when the rhythm changed and was therefore able to start treatment immediately.
The patient became unresponsive, pulseless, and the rhythm showed ventricular tachycardia. I began chest compressions and the patient raised their arms and tried to fight me.
Confused, I paused and checked a rhythm/pulses/assessed their alertness. The rhythm was indeed pulseless ventricular tachycardia and they immediately rolled their eyes back and went limp.
I must have gotten on the chest so quickly that they hadn't had time to lose brain perfusion. It's never happened since.
TrashCarrot
7. Brain is Braining
A young woman, in her 30's, had a stroke. She clotted off the basilar artery, the big artery in the base of the brain that supplies all of the "primitive" functions, like breathing, and awareness. I found out about her a day after the event. This, by the book, is a hopeless case. She was literally already dead.
But, because she was young, they prevailed upon me to do something. I poked a catheter (a long skinny plastic tube) into her groin artery, then snaked it up to the blocked artery in the base of her brain. I infused a clot busting medication into the artery for about 12 hours (tPA).
I re-checked, and the clot was gone. She woke up the next day. After a month, she literally walked out of the hospital.
She sent me a nice card a month or so later. It bothered me that her handwriting was better than mine, even after her stroke, but I was pretty happy.
Michigander_from_Oz
8. Mom Did It
I’m a Pediatric neuropsychologist. I got a referral for more or less consolidation care. Patient was 13, wheelchair bound, required therapeutic oxygen, seizures, arthritis, musculoskeletal problems, suspected autism, completely nonverbal, severe behavior challenges, the list goes on.
He was being followed by at least 8 different specialties, clearly none of whom were communicating with each other, and the med list was ~18 prescriptions long including some incredibly heavy duty stuff (opioids, antipsychotics, antiepileptics, that sorta stuff).
Got kicked to me after his umpteenth ER trip because the ER doc felt something was off and he needed someone to look at the whole picture.
Factitious disorder by caregiver, or Munchausen by proxy. All of the original symptoms were reported, going back to about a year old. It had possibly started with a febrile seizure (fever induced seizure) in infancy, but this was never witnessed by anyone but mom.
She had been telling docs different things. She was convinced her son had all these disorders, and told him he was going to die any day. He got a Make-A-Wish trip, donations, etc.
He was removed from her custody and taken off most of his meds. Within a few weeks he was out of the wheelchair playing basketball, no oxygen, super talkative and friendly, no behavior problems.
He did have a pretty significant intellectual disability, but there's no way to say if that was organic or the result of the prescription cocktail he had been fed all his life. Hopefully with some good therapy and a stable home, he can continue to make progress.
PathologicalLoiterer
9. Largest One
My dad has a blood condition that makes him prone to clotting and it has sent him to hospital several times now. The most recent case was this. He had started doing nightly runs, raising money for a charity, and every time he came home, he'd be more and more puffed out with a really sore leg.
He mostly just thought it was muscle cramping until at one point my mum just told him to check it out in the doctor. Doctor almost immediately told him to go to hospital as soon as he described it. the hospital took him in, sent him for an MRI (I think?).
In the nurse's words, they stated it was the largest blood clot they ever saw in a person that was still breathing.
So that was a fun week.
IfImNotDeadImSueing
10. Cannot Feel Pain
Back in my surgical days, resident on my trauma rotation, this really nice young guy came in via EMS. He'd been working on a factory site doing work high up on a tower (think 80-100 ft kind of deal). He was climbing his way down, about half way, when he heard commotion overhead and someone shouting 'Watch out!'
He's on the ladder so can't do too much but bows his head to cover it. Feels something strike the back of his neck. Manages to stay calm, reaches around and realizes a large piece of metal is embedded in him. His medic training kicks in, he calmly climbs down the rest of the ladder, sits down and asks someone to call an ambulance.
Wish I could upload the photos I have. It's a wrench 36 cm / 14 inches long, but the non-wrench end is a pointed pick ax type tool. And that's what's embedded in him. Nestled nicely against C3/C4 (middle of the neck).
All we can get is x rays, too much metal artifact for a decent CT. We can't see any fractures, fully intact neuro exam. Rock star of a spinal surgeon just decides to yeet it out. Few stitches, soft collar for a week and guys back to normal.
NeurochikB
11. Diabetic Gangrene
I dealt with gangrene from diabetic complications in a woman. She had already had one leg amputated for the same issue and was then apparently considered too high risk for a second amputation. It was a death sentence for her. I remember other coworkers making morbid “jokes”(?) about when her toes would fall off and which one.
The worst part was towards the end she wasn’t really with it anymore, totally liquid diet and liquid meds (I think liquid oxy just as-needed and those cheek swabs to keep her hydrated ish). Her family came to visit and you could see she wasn’t really responsive anymore so they just settled in and started complaining about how bad she reeks.
Like, I can’t imagine those being my final moments, my family members showing up to sit around and complain about me dying with too much odor as my body rots around me. Holy cow.
Was it the worst smell I’ve ever dealt with? Yes. Did I feel the need to nonstop whine about it? No, it wouldn’t have changed anything for the better. It would have cost those people absolutely nothing to have stayed quiet and yet they still chose to be like that.
MutedSongbird
12. One Less Heartbeat
I’m not a Dr or a RN but I work in healthcare. I take ultrasound pictures of people's hearts. I put my probe down on a middle aged lady in the ER. I thought my machine was on “Frozen” and went to unfreeze the picture. Turns out her heart was barely beating and it looked like it wasn’t moving.
She had walked off the street and felt out of breath. A normal heart ejection fraction (how well it’s squeezing) is 55% and up.
Hers was about 2% if that. Because it was barely beating and blood wasn’t moving around the blood started to clot together. It made a huge clot. It was an easy 6 cm x 5 cm. For reference a female heart is considered to be dilated at 5.3 cm.
So the clot inside the heart was bigger than a dilated heart. It was bad. I honestly have no idea how she was able to walk around at that point.
MinimumArtichoke6900
13. A Lot of Plastic
As a cardiovascular tech, I was doubling as a special procedures tech in radiology when a healthy young man (20s) who was visiting a friend collapsed in our CCU. He had lost femoral pulses and overall was suddenly very critically ill.
We were asked to do an aortic angiogram to define his anatomy and all arterial access was occluded. We finally got a catheter in his left axillary artery and managed to get a picture of his total aortic dissection that began at his aortic valve, spiraled down and occluded his right renal and most of his iliac arteries to the femoral.
We did what we could to stabilize him and sent him to Houston where he was grafted and he lived. I saw him maybe 2 years later when he was back at our shop for a checkup. He was scarred from his neck to his knees...a lot of plastic in there!
You guessed it...he had an unsuspected Marfan syndrome and it almost killed him. I never saw anything else close to that much vascular trauma that survived. I wasn't all that aware of Marfan syndrome back then and now every time I see long skinny digits I remember that guy.
OGbeachbum
14. Green Eyes
A 23 y/o female came in with sepsis after a kidney transplant on the black market. She had been on the transplant list, but had not yet received a match, so I guess her parent decided to take her fate into their own hands out of desperation.
Parents wouldn’t tell us where they had been to acquire it, but the patient was septic with a strain of bacteria called New Delhi metallo-beta lactamase (NDM) which, as you can probably guess from the name, was first identified in the Indian subcontinent.
This kind of bacteria produces carbapenemase, an enzyme that digests a wide range of β-lactam antibiotics, including carbapenems, which are basically our last resort of antibiotics for the treatment of infections caused by resistant strains of bacteria.
So the patient was being pumped full of our best antibiotics and this bacteria was simply digesting them. Patient then got a secondary pseudomonas infection in both their eyeballs and had to have them removed. Pseudomonas is a nasty bacteria, and one you don’t want in your eyes. Google ‘pseudomonas keratitis’ at your own peril.
They did sadly die in the end.
Major_Philosopher_75
15. Head Hole
This is probably the craziest patient I had during residency. Took a call about a patient with a gunshot wound to the center of his forehead, but they said he was talking and just complaining of a headache. EMS said it was witnessed by bystanders and the guy had been shot by a handgun from a range of about ten feet.
Guy shows up, has a crater in his forehead, an exit wound in the back, and this weird ridge that’s really tender over his scalp, but otherwise he’s fine and just says he’s sore. Turns out on his CT scan the bullet tumbled and basically followed the contour of his skull and it was all superficial.
It’s a weird feeling to discharge someone from the emergency department who was shot in the head.
SmallFall
16. Open Minded Guy
A "regular" came into the ER one night. He was an alcoholic, petty criminal and habitually got into trouble with his friends/business associates, ending up in the ER on a semi-regular basis for falling over, fighting, or some other idiocy. He was 50 perhaps?
This time he'd owed a "friend" some money, so there was a collection call. Not one to have much money at home, it ended in a fight and he was knocked to the ground, after which the "friend" put a foot on his neck and hit him in the temple with a crowbar, before leaving him bleeding on the concrete floor.
The regular guest called the ambulance, who shipped him in. He was fully ambulatory, meaning he could walk, and coherent. He wanted to grab smokes, eat snacks, and didn't really understand why he was in the ER. Indeed, he only had a slight swelling, could use both eyes, and had no real pain. However, we decided to x-ray him, and I wheeled him up. He insisted on getting on the X-ray bed by himself...
But we didn't let him get up by himself. The side of his head was completely crushed into little bits, and a major blood vessel was torn open. However, he got a one in a million break, and one of the small shards of bone was lodged into the torn blood vessel, just about sealing it.
Without that, he would've been dead before his guest got through to emergency services. He was immediately shipped to emergency services and came down to visit and buy snacks two days later, completely recovered.
Millimeters from death, with just pure luck saving his life.
Antropon
17. Fake It, Till You Make It
Taking trauma call during surgery residency, had a prisoner come in after a fight and claimed he couldn’t move or feel his legs. All the CT scans and MRIs were normal, but we would shield his legs so he couldn’t see them and poke them with needles and other sharp objects, with enough force to cause pain- he never flinched or moved his legs at all. He was diagnosed with SCIWORA (spinal cord injury without radiographic abnormality).
He stayed in the hospital for a week, no improvement. Always had one guard with him. One night they were down in the lobby watching some television but the guard needed to use the restroom. The patient said, “where could I possibly go? I’m paralyzed!” Guard left him alone for two minutes.
Patient last seen sprinting down the road, butt-naked, cheeks flapping in the breeze. Made it to a city four hours away by car before he was caught again. I have never seen anyone fake it so well. Truly playing the long con!
Wine_and_sunshine
18. Forced Sickness
I worked in health care for nearly 20yrs. While taking a break from the ICU (due to it being emotionally draining) I worked in home health for a bit. I had a patient who clearly had Munchausen syndrome. On a daily basis she would call her insurance to see what things would be covered if she was diagnosed with this or that.
She called her Doctor's office an average of 5x during my shift with her, she would report all kinds of non real symptoms. She pestered the doctors into doing exploitive laparoscopic surgery, of course nothing was found.
One day I walked in and she was rubbing her incisions with rotten cabbage trying to get it infected. She wasn't seeking pain meds (except to sell) really.
She was just as happy with antibiotics or stool softeners, anything, as long as they wrote her a prescription and she got to go to the pharmacy where she did a whole song and dance for them too, claiming allergies and reactions.
She always increased the exaggeration of her story too. One time she fluttered her eyes (after making sure I was looking) and said she lost consciousness in that half a second.
She called the doctor and claimed she lost consciousness for 5 mins, she called the insurance and claimed it was 10min, she called the pharmacy and claimed it was 30min, then she called 911 and told them she woke up on the floor after losing consciousness for 4 hrs.
The worst thing about her was she was a mom. Her son was 28 at the time and by all the stories of his childhood illnesses and all her saying how he is severely disabled
I knew she basically messed up his childhood with Munchausen by proxy. She portrayed him as being severely disabled and that's why he would never find a wife...I met him, he was healthy and of average intelligence. He wasn't looking for a wife, he was gay, but she refused to accept that.
Working with her was so miserable that I took a couple years off from any and all healthcare after that.
invisible_for_this
19. Lucky or Unlucky
Young (18-20) woman went running into a small rural hospital ER pretending to have abdominal pain. Police officer had tagged her going 40+km over the limit which was ‘stunt driving’ as per the new law in Ontario (impound and license suspension automatic). Cop followed her into the ER and apparently said he’d be waiting for her when she left.
Locum staff such as myself were housed at a small B&B about 15 mins away, and the ER had pre-printed order sets to be done before we arrived.
When I arrived she flat out admitted that she just came in because she freaked out and didn’t stop. I told her we’d give her 45 mins to call her parents/family before I booted her.
Except, her test results came in. bHCG came back positive, and subsequent ultrasound came back showing extremely early ectopic.
Officer figures out something is up when he hears an air ambulance call come in over the radio.
She was completely asymptomatic and just worked out that she dodged both charges and a life threatening issue by accident.
It was definitely a WTF moment.
Graigori
20. Seeking Attention from Family
This patient comes in for back pain with "weakness" of the legs. Gets a full workup with MRI, standard blood work, and then some immunological things to look for stuff like myasthenia gravis.
No neurological or immunological explanation for the "weakness." Patient is seen by physical therapy and they are of the opinion that the patient is holding back intentionally.
Go to see the patient at the end of the day and prep them for discharge. Patient is infuriated that they're being discharged. Yelling and screaming about how they aren't better, how they're disappointed in the institution, blah blah blah.
They said one particular thing that still clearly stands out 3-4 years later. "I can't believe you're sending me home already. I haven't even told my family I'm here, and now you're going to send me home before they even have the chance to see me?"
My attending and I leave the room to arrange things with the nurses. We go back in and the patient is out of bed and standing up in the middle of the room. Miraculously the patient is able to walk with zero assistance when they had so much difficulty with any assistance over the previous two days. At that point, they were enraged we went into the room without knocking. They were discharged home after a conversation regarding abuse of medical services.
[deleted]
21. Blind Lie
I’m a nurse for an ophthalmologist. We had a 21 year old new patient claiming to be completely blind from a sudden and severe glaucoma diagnosis from a previous unknown doctor. He would feel around while walking, trying to keep eyes rolled back into his head.
The whole 9 yards. He said he is a famous YouTube rapper that is now unable to make videos or earn a living. I exclaimed to have heard of him before and very excitedly asked him to search and show me his YouTube channel on my phone so that I could subscribe.
He took my phone out of my hand and effortlessly found the YouTube app and typed away in the search bar. Oh, and of course his eyes were back to normal and focused.
sexyfoxx85
22. Pregnant
I was told this one by a fellow nurse I used to work with when we had a psych floor. It’s not unusual for psych patients to stash things in various orifices. This one woman was convinced she was impregnated by a ghost-like figure but no one would believe her.
So one day she started complaining of massive pelvic and uterine pain. She called them contractions. So the doctor goes to do an exam. The doctor feels something larger in there so they prep a table to get the object out which was quite large.
So the wonderful third year helping with the procedure starts hearing this woman complain of contractions and yelling things like “Should I push, I’m gonna start pushing.” Doctor trying to work forceps around this woman’s parts so as to not hurt her. Finally goes “got...” and as he starts saying “it” he pulls out a baby doll. Head only.
The poor med student did the wobble. Went all flush, had problems keeping balance and about took a dive. I was told he didn’t live that down the whole rotation.
Jimmienoman
23. Hidden Agenda
I'm a nurse. We had a guy who had to come in every 3 months to get a medical certificate to say he couldn't work at his retail job due to severe disabling back pain. He was receiving large amounts of insurance money for this condition.
After the Dr had done his usual examination and questions and signed it off the guy asks the doctor to check his shoulder which doc does and asks how he injured it? Guy says playing rugby for a competitive team. “Really?!”, says the doc. “How long have you been playing for them?” Guy has been playing and training the whole time.
Doc puts this info on the insurance form. Doc loses his mind in the staff room laughing. Next week the patient goes ballistic in reception because his insurance has been canceled.
Mariawest
24. For An Unknown Reason
I am a nurse and I had a patient who worked in a hospital (janitor) so he knew enough to fake a bit. He was seeking pain meds, complaining of chest pain, wanting morphine. He was worked up for everything cardiac and was fine. Then he tried to claim GI discomfort when he was being discharged. Cleared again for everything.
Faked chest pain again. Cleared again. Now he’s my patient. I’m a new face. He’s telling me he’s having abdominal pain. I called the doctor, knowing this guy's history. He says he’ll be up to see him soon. This patient wants a ginger ale (some stomach ache). I decided to go to lunch. My coworker comes into the lunch room, disgusted.
This guy had taken a dump in a basin and then dumped the ginger ale over it and tried to tell her he’d had fecal vomiting. He obviously needed dilaudid right now for the pain.
I walked into his room and sure enough, a pile of crap in a puddle of ginger ale. I told him I’d have to take away his food and drinks and we’d have to put an NG down. Suddenly he changed his tune. He admitted to faking it.
Why do these people do what they do?
Elizabitch4848
25. A Touch of Yellow
A friend of mine was feeling crappy for days. He'd go to work, feel exhausted, come home, sleep 13 hours, repeat. Finally he got to feeling so bad he decided to go to the ER. He drove himself around 3 AM.
He got out of the car and the security guard said "Oh my God" and ran to get him a wheelchair. ER admissions said "Oh my God" and got the ER doc. The ER doc noted my friend was quite yellow. They ordered blood work, when it came back the ER doc didn't believe it and had it done again.
When the second round came back the doc asked my friend for next of kin information. My friend said "you can't call my mom, it's 4 AM" and the doc said "Your kidneys have completely failed. We are going to send you upstairs and give you a pint of blood and an hour of dialysis and we need to know who to call if you still don't make it. You should have been dead a month ago."
He got a kidney from his sister and is still doing well today. Apparently the kidney was as close a match as one can get and he should live an essentially normal lifespan.
NovaRunner
26. He Wants to Get High
My next door neighbor would drink a 12 pack of Mountain Dew a day and keep kidney stones year round to get pills. He had a pretty sweet deal too, getting 90 loracets, 90 Xanax and 90 something else (I forget) every month from his doctor. He just couldn’t stop doing other stuff.
I tell this story just because I was impressed with his determination to hurt himself and get surgery once a year just to get high. Like, the absolute determination that takes. My mother is a recovering addict and had been getting the same pills around that time and I don’t recall her intentionally hurting herself.
She just went with already messed up issues before she got herself into a clinic to get clean.
n0vapine
27. All for Fashion
My cousin got glasses. Her 7 year old little sister also wanted glasses because she thought it was so cool to wear them.
So she started telling her teachers she couldn't read what was on the chalkboard. And she'd squint at home, and go incredibly close to the TV to watch things because she said she couldn't see things clearly. Her parents got worried and took her to the doctor.
She read everything wrong on the vision test. Everyone seemed convinced that she needed glasses. But the doctor was a little concerned because the tests indicated she needed really thick glasses, and usually that wasn't the case unless there was a family history of vision issues.
Her parents both had 20/20 vision and her sister only had astigmatism. They all realized she was faking it.
So the doctor told her parents in front of her that she'd need some pretty intense eye surgery so she'd be able to see without glasses. They even wheeled in a machine to make it convincing to say they could do the surgery right then and there.
She freaked out, confessed to faking it all and started to cry. She got grounded for a while.
sensitiveinfomax
28. Spot On Lie
I’m an Audiologist (hearing specialist), who has worked in the private sector with legal claims, and with the V.A. handling veterans' claims of hearing loss. With those two populations, having people faking hearing loss is pretty common.
Now, as a professional, for me the hearing test starts when I call the person's name from the waiting room. In a normal voice I call them, if they answer I already know that they're normal/no worse than mild loss.
This was the case with this guy. He answered and came in, we had a normal conversation. So, case history over, time to test, I give the instructions over the headphones at a reasonable 50 decibels (dB). "Raise your hand when you hear the tone."
The 50dB tone should be easy and clear, but he doesn't raise his hand. I go up. And up, and up. Finally, I'm putting a 100dB tone in his ear, he's flinching from pain. It's so loud, but he doesn't raise his hand to indicate he's heard the tone, even with re-instruction.
I immediately know what I'm dealing with. I have taught entire classes on how to spot and try to get estimated true results from people trying to fake it.
Long story short, I wrote an incriminating report outlining all his inconsistencies and faking behaviors. The thing that made this one so memorable, is that we had such a pleasant conversation before. He was a fire chief, I have firefighters in my family.
It was one of those where you think "if it wasn't for professional/patient appropriate distance, we could hang and be friends." But then, this guy was determined to get a disability rating, and it just pissed me off.
Earguy
29. Cold as Dead
I had a patient with an internal temp of 75 F. He was drowsy, but fully alert and oriented. He was found in a river embankment in the middle of winter. He had been lying there overnight before he was found by a dog walker.
We didn’t believe the equipment when it told us 75 degrees, so we repeated with a rectal thermometer, then a different rectal thermometer, and then a rectal probe attached to the bedside and medi-therm system.
They were all consistent and after several hours of heating measures we got their internal temp up to 90 degrees before they went to ICU.
The second “how the heck are you not dead” patient was a person who had a blood sugar of 1,800. They weren’t in a coma. Just a woman who walked in to complain about abdominal pain.
jujapee
30. The Great Pretender
I’m a 4th year medical student. On my ER rotation and a trauma came in from a woman that had been arrested. During the drive the patient “banged” her head 4 times against the window of the police car and then went unresponsive.
She came to us with a bruise over her forehead and was unresponsive. We all smelled BS but the patient was a great actor, and didn't even flinch during the digital rectal exam (which is standard for all patients that come in through the trauma bay). Though some of the nurses said that they caught her “peeking” at us when would leave the room.
We ended up getting a CT scan (which was normal) and was even considering intubating her to secure her airway when our attending finally walked over to her, opened her eyelids and held them open while telling her to wake up.
Finally she started fighting to close her eyes and the jig was up. The doctor called her out and she proceeded to start screaming at us. She was much more pleasant when she was pretending to have a brain injury.
footsiefried
31. Caught Red Handed
The EMT instructor told me he and his crew ran on a seizure call. Gets there, door's wide open, female patient is unconscious and buck naked. They start assessing her while one guy clears the house to make sure no one else is inside and get something to cover her.
After doing an arm drop test and trying to check her pupils, they all figure out that she's faking her illness. However, their general policy was never to openly state that, but to just roll with it instead. In line with that, he starts to call for an ambulance to come take her to the hospital.
When one of his guys says "Captain, she's clearly faking it." Then came the highlight of the night.
This woman, who is supposed to be unconscious and unresponsive, says "No I'm not."
poizunman206
32. Little Did She Know
Years ago I had a patient who had been rear-ended in an auto accident a few weeks before I saw her. She had a history of lupus. She was decked out in the usual "I'm crippled" paraphernalia (crutches, neck brace, elbow braces, wrist braces, knee braces) and could barely walk. I saw her a couple of times and she showed no improvement.
One Saturday I was on call but had to take a 'back streets' route to the hospital because of an 'event' taking place on the main thoroughfare.
I apparently drove through her neighborhood, because, wonders behold, there she was wearing old-lady spandex power walking down the sidewalk (holding weights in both hands). I did not call out to her.
Next week, she was back in the clinic, with her "I'm crippled" getup on again. Hmmm. A few weeks later I got the subpoena for the deposition, and it all became clear.
konqueror321
33. If You Say So
I was an EMT and had a frequent flyer who rotated through various chief complaints, one which was complete blindness — emphasis on complete. We did our duty, of course: got him on board, took vitals, BLS’d him to the nearest hospital. But we occasionally had a bit of fun with him.
One of the blindness calls, we noted that he walked a rather narrow and windy path from his trailer to the rig without any issue. Once onboard the rig, when asked for his insurance card, he fingered through his wallet and fetched it from among a mass of cards without issue. When asked direct questions, he met our gaze and followed it when our heads moved.
When I pointed all this out to him, his only response was to quickly look at something over my shoulder and stammer through, "N-no... I'm blind."
"Ok, our mistake then. Off we go..."
lightheat
34. One Wrong Move
One time, a Paramedic I work with told a frequent flyer that we weren't going to give her any pain medicine because she walked to the ambulance and didn't seem to be in any pain. She immediately went "unresponsive" and kept up the act until we got to the ED.
When we were at the hospital the Medic said, "Too bad she's unresponsive because we can't give pain meds to people who aren't responsive!" Her eyes immediately shot open.
He looked at her, with the Doc and nurses in the room, and said, "Now you're definitely not getting any pain meds." and walked out.
sixacorns
35. Meet Steve
I'm an EM doc. Lots of weak pseudoseizure stories, those are fairly common. Some of those people are straight up seeking IV benzos, but most are people with seizure disorders who have some psych issues and are coming by it honestly.
They're just sad, confused people who don't know how to handle stress for the most part. I've seen all sorts of weird people faking symptoms. The most devious was a guy I'll call Steve.
Steve had to be in the medical field somehow. Probably a nurse or tech. He was fairly tall and skinny. He claimed to have Marfan Syndrome, a rare connective tissue disease that makes you tall and skinny and puts you at a higher risk for an aortic dissection.
You can think of aortic dissections as the main pipe carrying blood starting to break. They're bad.
Steve took it to the next level. He'd flex his arm when the blood pressure cuff was on one arm, then relax on the other. This caused vastly different blood pressure readings in each arm, and this is another classically taught finding in dissection.
In addition to this, the bastard would say that he had an anaphylactic reaction to contrast dye. He did this in an attempt to force us to pretreat him with benadryl and steroids, which took 8 hours. During those 8 hours, he'd request opiates after opiates before getting his CTA done. He also would get nauseated, requesting phenergan.
For those who don't know, IV dilaudid, phenergan, and benadryl is the best ride the hospital can really put you on. They all potentiate each other. Highly reviewed by opiate junkies everywhere.
I got Steve on his third visit. The two prior visits showed no dissections. Steve was dumb enough to come in during normal business hours, and I managed to get a hold of this surgeon. Surgeon said he'd never taken care of the guy, and that he'd gotten multiple calls about him.
I still offered the CTA to the patient. I told him he'd be getting zero opiates though. He left in a fit.
Screw steve. No one has seen him since. I'm sure he's at a new hospital now.
Hippo-Crates
36. Nice Skit
I’m a nurse. I work in acute rehab, so patients come to us to do physical therapy and recover from surgeries, illnesses, etc. We had a patient who played us well.
So this dude was ready to go home and medically stable but very, very anxious. He would always ask for me to recheck his vitals and blood sugar, always come up with new concerns like his hand is twitching, or he feels dizzy, or he’s having blurry vision. I thought I was pretty good at ruling out his concerns and calming him down.
Then one day I check his vitals and his pulse is quite low, like 48. Everything else is good so I’m not concerned, I tell him I’ll recheck in a few minutes. I come back and he’s not looking so good. Pulse still low, oxygen quite low, and he’s just woozy and slow to respond.
I got my charge nurse in and we’re worried about an opiate overdose. We discuss this and the patient’s breathing gets slower and shallower. Call the MD, give him some narcan, call EMS.
They arrive and now he’s nearly unresponsive, barely reacting to the sternal rub. They give him more Narcan with no effect so now we’re thinking of excluding stroke. He has the slightest droop on one side of his mouth. Was that always there? Crap, did I miss it?
I give them a report and they rush him to the hospital, where they do a very thorough work up because he's at high risk for a lot of issues.
We followed up the next day, and nothing was wrong with him! The jerk must’ve heard me mention his pulse and said “this is my chance!” I think he held his breath when I took his O2 sat and started dropping his mouth once we mentioned stroke. Probably skipped lunch since his blood sugar was low too. All because he didn’t want to go home. Now he’s banned from our facility.
ocean_gremlins
37. I’m Alive But I’m Dead
At 18, I had just received delivery on a new motorcycle, rolled out of the dealership. A b-double driver had fallen asleep and drove through the highway barrier into the service road (which I was on) and then into me. I saw it coming and braced, somehow survived.
About a month later I took delivery on my second road motorcycle to promptly get rear ended at a red light but a drunk driver. Then at the end of the year, I got into an abseiling accident where a poorly anchored sling had dislodged and added additional rope to the line and jarred my back.
Got to the hospital, same doctor again, he straight up looked at me and said “How the heck aren't you dead and why are you back?”
TapThenFap
38. Got Him
My wife works in a hospital (Radiographer) and some of the nurses have told stories of those who fake being unconscious. Apparently a couple of sure fire ways to check this are knuckling the sternum or knocking on a clavicle without warning.
Then there was the amusing story she heard where a nurse said out loud "You know that even while unconscious, a person will reflexively not let their hand hit their face?"
She then proceeded to lift the patient's arm and drop it over their face. Yup, you guessed what happened next. The 'unconscious' person stopped their hand in mid-air.
cyborg_127
39. Nice Referral
Patient and a family member coming in stating that the patient has epilepsy and needs benzos. While gathering basic history the patient starts having a seizure. Rolling on the ground, head shaking and feet kicking... I asked the patient if he needed any help during the seizure..
He responds back saying he is experiencing a seizure. Family member is obviously trying to convince me that a patient is having seizures like this everyday and needs benzos. I kindly told the patient and family member this is psychogenic nonepileptic seizures and he needs to see a psychologist for an evaluation.
They had a hard time believing this condition and walked out.
iTz_KingQ
40. Good Stone
Had a woman bring in a kidney stone she passed and said she was in agony with another stone. She ramped up the analgesic ladder until she was on opiates, pethidine most likely.
All the scans came back negative and we had the stone she brought in analyzed. It came back as being quartz, not a mineral that occurs in the body.
When confronted with this fact she quickly left.
6 months later and I rotated to another nearby hospital. A woman came in with abdominal pain and I went to see her. We locked eyes and instantly recognised each other. I said nothing but she knew the jig was up and self discharged.
DrPeterR
41. She Made It Clear
I'm an ICU and ER nurse. We get a lot of malingering in the ER. One day, one of our frequent fliers came in and started faking a seizure in triage. Now obviously I know this lady and she's been fake-seized a million times before. But this time it's in the lobby in front of about 30 people, who have no way of knowing that it's fake.
She's lolling around on the floor making a fool of herself and folks look horrified. I walked up to her and said calmly:
"Karen. What are you doing?"
To which this genius responds, "I'M SEIZING!"
I told her to stop seizing. So she did.
CursesandMutterings
42. Male Doctors Only
I'm a resident (not a psych resident), but this happened in my psychiatry rotation in medical school when I was in medical school:
There was a patient at an inpatient psychiatric facility. She constantly insisted that she had a mass on her breasts and demanded to be physically examined only by male doctors.
When the psychiatrist I was rotating under declined to perform a physical exam, she asked me to do it during my daily patient interview. I also declined the physical exam, but had a bit of a hunch to check her medical records.
It turned out she had an ultrasound done a week before that found only normal breast tissue without masses. However, apparently this lady had frequented many doctor's offices with various complaints of an unspecific nature and would usually focus on breasts or vaginal complaints when she visited male physician's offices.
We diagnosed her with factitious disorder (formerly known as Munchausen syndrome) and histrionic personality disorder. It seems her goal was mostly attention from medical professionals (she had lots of issues), but we also had to be careful to make sure she wasn't fishing for a lawsuit. Patients like her are why doctors document everything meticulously.
So the patient wouldn't admit to making things up all the time. According to the psychiatrist I was working with, she didn't actually believe any of her "health problems" exist and her primary goal was the attention from medical professionals. If she actually believed she was sick, we would have diagnosed her with an illness anxiety disorder, commonly known as hypochondria.
PMME_ur_lovely_boobs
43. Hemorrhaging
I had a hemorrhage I didn't know about. I had seen some blood while wiping that was a bit more than I chalked up to wiping too hard. Went to a physician and he checked my anus and told me I had hemorrhoids that I had probably agitated. I recommend using baby wipes and preparing H.
Well, two days later, I had started feeling very nauseous with a nasty headache. I slept right up until it was time to go to work, and so decided I shouldn't call off. About five hours into my shift, I go to take my break and use the restroom. The moment I pushed, I passed out and fell off the toilet, to be found by my coworker however much later.
EMTs are loading me up and start taking my vitals, my O2 levels are low af, and when we got to the hospital, they rushed me through the back and into a room. They say I need blood Pronto, and I remember passing out again.
The next thing I woke up to was an RN throwing my curtain open and shouting, "Why the heck isn’t he hooked up yet?!" Apparently the ball was dropped somewhere between getting my blood type and the blood dropped off.
So I sat there for over 45 minutes needing blood and that RN was madder than hell Finally got hooked up and I took 3 pints of blood, stayed overnight, and needed another pint by the next afternoon.
Hemorrhage was found, microsurgery performed and I've been fine ever since. The same RN came to see me after my surgery and told me she was terrified I was going to die when the EMTs handed over my vitals when dropped off.
evanjw90
44. Lost A Tooth For It
Dentist here. I had a patient complain of toothache which required extraction. Did extraction and the patient left in good health. Patient called within 20 minutes of leaving saying they were in the worst pain of their life. 11/10 pain and requested a script for oxycodone.
Patient came back the next day in tears. Shambles. I started to feel bad because it looked like they were in genuine pain. Take a look in the mouth and everything is fine. Healing is normal. And once again, they request oxycodone. I say no, we need to think of something else. And that is where it changed.
When I declined giving a strong narcotic they flipped the switch and became violent. Yelling. Throwing instruments. Had to be escorted out. This is where I learned substance users will do anything to obtain what they want.
Macabalony
45. That’s It
I'm not a doctor but a nurse. There was a geriatric patient taking advantage of the call bell, because she was an attention seeker. She always needed really basic things to get done for her because she thought the place was a hotel (it was a rehabilitation ward, and we should try to motivate patients to do as much for themselves as possible).
She would ring the bell for reasons like "please lift the blanket up for me" or "please pass me my phone" or "please feed me" and claimed that her hands didn't work. I caught her several times lifting herself off the bed with her hands, grabbing her phone when it rang, you get the gist.
After days of saying no and that she needs to start doing things for herself, she grew more and more frustrated. Eventually she snapped, grabbed me by my collar, shook me aggressively and yelled "what don't you understand about the fact that my hands don't work?!?!"
I didn't know what to tell her... I just looked at her and blinked as she slowly released her death grip off me.
I guess I healed her hands. Praise the Lord.
Beasti-benz